00:00Well, next on the programme, we're going to take a look at the international reaction, specifically the European reaction to the American capture of Maduro.
00:09Nicholas Morgan is with me live on the programme now.
00:12He's the director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Newcastle University.
00:18Hello to you. Thanks for joining us.
00:21Hello again. How are you doing?
00:23I'm doing well. It's good to talk to you about this story.
00:27Let's start then with Donald Trump.
00:29He's been explicit, hasn't he, that the events in Venezuela are at least partly about oil.
00:35We have the United Nations Human Rights Office today saying that the capture of Maduro undermined international law.
00:41However, European leaders have been rather muted, haven't they, in their criticism of the United States.
00:48We even had Emmanuel Macron initially saying that we could only rejoice at what had happened.
00:54Macron has walked back a little on those comments.
00:56But my question to you is, why are we seeing the EU, the UK being so limited in their criticism of the US?
01:06Are they scared of Donald Trump?
01:09Well, they clearly are scared of Donald Trump.
01:11I mean, we need to spend a little bit of time to think about what's actually happened.
01:15Yeah. So we've got to return to what you might think of as 19th century gunboat diplomacy or something from the 1930s.
01:23The Guardian's Julian Borgia talked about 19th century politics with the 21st century weapons.
01:28So, you know, I'm no fan of Nicolás Maduro and I'm not an apologist for Chavismo.
01:34He probably is, excuse me, an illegitimate president.
01:38But Trump has flagrantly broken international law.
01:43He's taken aggressive action in violation of another state's sovereignty.
01:46He's kidnapped a head of state on, pardon the pun, trumped up charges.
01:50And rather than using the usual excuses about, you know, a return to democracy and all those sorts of things, he's clearly, you know, foregrounded the notion of oil.
02:00The previous regime or the current regime, as still is, actually, is only illegitimate for him insofar as it doesn't allow him to achieve his economic goal, which is complete control of Venezuela's resources.
02:13You know, he appeals without irony to the Monroe Doctrine, you know, and now in self-aggrandizing fashion referred to as the Dunro Doctrine.
02:23But at least the Monroe Doctrine had a, you know, was legitimized because it was it was there supposedly to resist European imperialism in Latin America.
02:32Now, we don't get that. Trump really isn't seeking that kind of legitimacy.
02:37This is raw power. It's showing that the U.S. is a regional hegemon.
02:40And the drug war discourse is there for sure. We've heard something about that already in the program.
02:45But it really is a nonsense. And he's using it to threaten Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico.
02:51And the underlying message is simple. So Latin America belongs to us.
02:55We get to use their resources in our interests and to hell with anyone who gets in our way.
02:59Now, that's the dilemma for the EU. How do we respond to that from Europe?
03:04Because European soft power has always been based on a liberal vision of a rules based international order.
03:11And of course, there may have been a lot of hypocrisy in this.
03:13You know, that order has always been flouted at times by powerful actors. Right.
03:17But it's been very important and it has been something that people have been able to appeal to.
03:23You know, there's been a perceived need to appeal to a liberal discourse foregrounded on notions of human rights and the sovereignty of individual states.
03:30So you can imagine the consternation in diplomatic circles in Europe now.
03:34You know, Trump's using brute force in some cases and others.
03:37He's using economic clout. And of course, the war over tariffs is very much in European policymakers minds.
03:44Right. You know, there's still the threat of a 50 percent tariff on European steel and so on and so forth.
03:49So we've had a very mixed reaction in Europe.
03:52You know, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, they've condemned Trump's actions.
03:56Spain's done so in conjunction with Latin American countries rather than with European countries, which is significant, I think, in itself.
04:02Other countries like Germany and the UK, where I am, have fudged the issue of legality completely.
04:08And others like Italy have essentially endorsed everything Trump's done.
04:11You know, in fact, we've had, you know, here in the UK, we've had the leader of the Conservative Party talking about the moral rightsness of what Trump did in Venezuela.
04:21And of course, the problem with Greenland.
04:23We've had the statement today about Greenland, you know, threats to take over what is essentially part of Europe.
04:27Right. Which essentially would be the end of NATO.
04:30So it would be a fundamental threat to European sovereignty.
04:34But this is the world that we're in.
04:36And all of this has to be seen from within the, you know, the context of the U.S.'s national security review, which caused a lot of kerfuffle in Europe.
04:44Right. You know, in many ways, we can see the U.S. drawing back from its role as the global hegemon.
04:50It's thinking more about its regional its regional role.
04:54But it's talked a lot about things like, you know, cultural erasure in Europe, which really speaks to a whole range of far right talking points.
05:01So the problem for Europe at the moment is that it's, you know, caught between a rock and a hard place between the potential of interference from two world powers, the U.S.
05:10and Russia and the U.S. no longer being, you know, what's the word for it?
05:14The umbrella, the security umbrella, the security blanket that Europe always counted on.
05:19And that's that that's really disturbing.
05:21Yeah. And if I may, I want to pick up on something you said there about about Greenland, as you've been arguing, in your view, Europe rather weak here,
05:31certainly looking very divided with different EU countries saying different things towards Donald Trump.
05:37Now, we again have Stephen Miller, top adviser to Donald Trump, again, threatening Greenland this week.
05:44Can Europe stand alone? Is it going to be united if there is some kind of potential attack on Greenland?
05:55It's certainly not that united at the moment. Is it on Ukraine?
05:59No, that's right. I mean, all of this is revealing the many cracks that exist within, you know, within the European Union, right, politically and all sorts of ways.
06:10We've seen the resurgence of a of a populist right across the whole bloc, which is really problematic and which is fed into mainstream, mainstream politics.
06:20I mean, your question is a really good one and I can't answer it.
06:23Who knows? Perhaps a U.S. direct threat to Greenland might produce some kind of unifying effect in Europe.
06:32It's hard to say. But if we're looking at a world which is, I would say, right now,
06:36being divided into regional interest blocs, Russia, China, U.S., Europe is extremely weak.
06:44It doesn't seem to have got the memo that this is not the world which, you know, which existed in the fall, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union.
06:52This is a new world order and Europe seems to be woefully prepared for it.
06:56So I can't really answer your question, but it's one which causes a lot of a lot of anxiety.
07:00And I would say also, I mean, let's just go back briefly to Latin America.
07:05I mean, you know, Latin America, as Porfirio Diaz said, you know, it's misfortune being so far from God and so close to the United States.
07:12What has Europe got to offer to our partners in Latin America?
07:16Are we going to show solidarity and respect for democratic norms with them or are we just going to kowtow to Donald Trump?
07:23And that seems to be, you know, well, it's a huge problem for European diplomacy.
07:28I can't resolve it. And it certainly doesn't seem to be being resolved right now.
07:32And just a final question for you then.
07:34Yesterday, we were listening here on the programme to a little of the United Nations General Assembly.
07:39And with your expertise on Latin America, I'd like to ask you about Colombia,
07:43the Colombian diplomat at the Security Council speaking with great concern and anger, frankly, over the scenes in Venezuela.
07:51How concerned do you think Colombia should be that it's in Donald Trump's sights next?
07:58Well, they should be concerned. I mean, the so-called charges against Gustavo Petro are a tissue of lies.
08:04They are absolutely absurd. To claim that Petro is, you know, part of a cartel is an utter nonsense.
08:10And it is a disgrace, actually, that, you know, these things seem to go unchallenged in Europe.
08:16Yes. I mean, Petro won't be in power for very long.
08:20He is coming to the end of his term. And who knows who will replace him?
08:24So we'll have to wait and see. But this is all part of the US using the war on drugs discourse as a big stick to threaten everybody in its so-called backyard.
08:34And this is a really disturbing return to that kind of politics.
08:39All right. Nicholas Morgan from the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Newcastle University.
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